caudle-cup--and all the time I was making similar excuses to give a look
or two and say a word or two to my poor child. It was while the second
ladies' lot was holding 'em enchained that I felt her lift herself a
little on my shoulder, to look across the dark street. "What troubles
you, darling?" "Nothing troubles me, father. I am not at all troubled.
But don't I see a pretty churchyard over there?" "Yes, my dear." "Kiss
me twice, dear father, and lay me down to rest upon that churchyard grass
so soft and green." I staggered back into the cart with her head dropped
on my shoulder, and I says to her mother, "Quick. Shut the door! Don't
let those laughing people see!" "What's the matter?" she cries. "O
woman, woman," I tells her, "you'll never catch my little Sophy by her
hair again, for she has flown away from you!"

Maybe those were harder words than I meant 'em; but from that time forth
my wife took to brooding, and would sit in the cart or walk beside it,
hours at a stretch, with her arms crossed, and her eyes looking on the
ground. When her furies took her (which was rather seldomer than before)
they took her in a new way, and she banged herself about to that extent
that I was forced to hold her. She got none the better for a little
drink now and then, and through some years I used to wonder, as I plodded
along at the old horse's head, whether there was many carts upon the road
that held so much dreariness as mine, for all my being looked up to as
the King of the Cheap Jacks. So sad our lives went on till one summer
evening, when, as we were coming into Exeter, out of the farther West of
England, we saw a woman beating a child in a cruel manner, who screamed,
"Don't beat me! O mother, mother, mother!" Then my wife stopped her
ears, and ran away like a wild thing, and next day she was found in the
river.

Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart now; and the dog